Once More With Feeling Read online

  ‘Is …?’ I couldn’t form the necessary words. My throat felt as if there was a hand wrapped tight around it, crushing me. ‘Is he …?’

  ‘We don’t know anything yet.’ That was not the immediate refutation that I wanted. It solved nothing, least of all that choking sensation. ‘He’s in surgery now.’

  ‘But what do they think?’ I whispered. ‘What did they say? How bad is it?’

  Mom was quiet for what was probably only a moment but felt like years. Long, iced-over ages, and I was suspended there in silence, waiting. Only waiting, as if there had never been and would never be anything but this moment. This telephone call. I was aware of the breath moving in and out of my chest, the seeping cold against the skin of my palm, the heat pricking at the back of my eyes, and that constriction in my throat like some kind of instant onset of strep. My mind raced and raced, but came up with nothing, and in the darkest part of me, that great emptiness seemed to stretch. Grow. Take over. I didn’t know how I could survive it. How anyone could.

  ‘You have to come, Sarah,’ Mom said then, finally. ‘You’re still his wife.’

  I had been in the town hospital far too many times over the years, and didn’t like the fact I was back now.

  I’d been born here, and had the pictures to prove it. But those pictures were the only happy memories connected to the place. The rest involved pain, of one sort or another. The time I’d fallen off of my bike in the fifth grade, breaking two fingers and giving myself a minor concussion. When I’d gotten my tonsils removed in the sixth grade and was given only ice chips to soothe the burn, rather than the promised vats of ice cream. My cold-blooded attempt to add good works to my college résumé in high school as a candy striper, which had involved entirely too many tragically dying people and my reluctant acceptance of the fact that I was terrible with other people’s physical pain and suffering.

  When I’d had my appendix removed the summer after my junior year of college. When I’d visited Lianne’s mother while she was dying of cancer, and nineteen-year-old, just-married Lianne was falling apart. When my father had had pneumonia that winter. All of those memories seemed to chase me, nipping at my ankles as I walked down the gleaming halls, my head swimming with the scent of the industrial-strength cleaning agents and that underlying, cloying smell of unwell that never seemed to go away no matter how much they scrubbed. The lights were always too bright here, the walls somehow too dingy.

  It was not a happy place.

  I followed the signs up to the ICU, aware that my body felt like someone else’s as I walked. A borrowed body, one physically up to this task, somehow, despite the fact I felt as if I’d left the contents of my brain behind at Lianne’s. Not that it mattered, because none of this felt real anyway. I thought I ought to feel any number of things, really, but I couldn’t seem to get there. I just couldn’t. I was numb everywhere I should have felt something. Just frozen all the way through. I’d driven across town in a daze, parked in the overpriced lot, marched across the cold asphalt as if on a mission, found my way inside … all without managing to form anything in the way of a coherent thought. I would have said that was impossible, had I not just done it.

  I walked to the nurse’s station in the ICU, identified myself as Tim’s next of kin, was told that Tim was still in surgery, and was then directed to the waiting room on the other side of the automatic glass doors, away from the low beeps and cloud of desperation that hung over the ward. The doctor would find me there when he came out of surgery, they said, with that dispassionate briskness that, I supposed, made medical personnel capable of doing their jobs in the midst of so much human misery. I swallowed and turned, wincing as my shoes squeaked against the floor, as if that might disturb the patients hooked up to their machines in all the curtained cubicles.

  Obediently, I trudged down the hall to the room marked ICU Waiting Room, and walked inside.

  And then immediately wished I hadn’t.

  Carolyn slumped in one of the jarringly cheerful blue chairs near the door like some kind of opera heroine, one arm thrown over her eyes, her other hand clenched around our mother’s. Our mother who sat next to Carolyn as if she was personally holding her upright with her positive thoughts and boundless support. I couldn’t help staring at them, just as I couldn’t help the little bubble of anger and jealousy that seemed to pop inside my chest. This was my mother’s version of not choosing sides?

  I jumped slightly when a hand came down heavily on my shoulder, but I knew who it was almost in that same instant, and smiled slightly as I turned into my father’s hug.

  ‘Terrible night,’ he said in an undertone, his low rumble of a voice like a small streak of comfort, lighting its way through me, making me feel that slightest bit less frozen. ‘Just terrible.’

  Carolyn shifted in her seat just then, dropped her arm, and opened her eyes to look directly at me.

  It was the first time we’d seen each other since That Day, and I’d gone to a good deal of trouble to avoid thinking about That Day, thank you. But suddenly, right here in the waiting room, Tim already dead for all I knew, not that I could allow myself to dwell on that, I couldn’t seem to think of anything else.

  I concentrated on the blouse in the air, royal blue and frozen in flight. Better that than what lay behind it. Even now. Once again, I felt half-naked and exposed, dingy bra on display for all the world to see. My stomach twisted, then seemed to fold in on itself. Much like the rest of me wanted to do.

  ‘Sarah.’ She said my name and then seemed to think better of it. For the first time in my entire life, my sister looked like a complete stranger to me. I saw nothing I recognized in her familiar features – nothing I knew looking back at me from her eyes.

  Or maybe I just wanted her to be a complete, unknowable alien. It made it so much easier to hate her.

  I told myself she looked like Olive Oyl, that she looked out of place and absurd, but I suspected the real problem was that she made me feel so frumpy. Even in operatic upset, she still looked interesting. My still-untrimmed hair was definitely getting shaggy, and I hadn’t bothered to dress for dinner at Lianne’s, which meant I was in ratty jeans and a sweater which, I knew now, was far too staid and boring. I felt like someone’s sad-sack Aunt Ethel. I felt like the kind of woman who couldn’t hold on to her husband. Which, in fact, I was.

  ‘Well,’ I said, when I could no longer stand the uncomfortable silence, the surge of anxiety, the immediate and vicious dip into body hatred, ‘At least this time you have your clothes on.’

  Carolyn stared back at me for another long, tense moment. Like she didn’t know me, either. I noticed her eyes were rimmed with red, and her dark hair was scraped back into a makeshift ponytail. She was too bony, as always, but tonight she actually looked fragile rather than chic. She bit her lower lip, as if she were physically biting back words, and dropped her gaze to the floor. My heart pounded in my chest, and I realized then that I wanted her to fight. Maybe I wanted the distraction. Or maybe I wanted the excuse to scream at her the way I had That Day – more proof that she was the kind of terrible, awful, reprehensible person who could do something like this to her own sister.

  ‘The nurses told me he’s still in surgery,’ I said instead, irritated that my voice sounded so hoarse. As if I had anything to be ashamed of here. ‘It looks like we’re in for a long night.’

  I felt foolish, suddenly, as if I were aping medical dramas I’d seen in the past. As if I were speaking the lines to some script, and I was a terrible actress. I still felt as if my body wasn’t mine, as if none of this were real, as if I were somewhere else watching it all happen. What did it say about me that some part of me wished I really was?

  But there was nothing to do but wait. And pretend that Carolyn wasn’t in the room. If my husband’s girlfriend had been anyone besides my sister, would I have allowed this? I knew I wouldn’t have. I didn’t know why I didn’t throw her out, too. But I didn’t. On some level, I was afraid that if I tried, she wouldn’t g
o. And worse – that my parents would back her up.

  And the truth I had to sit with – for hours – was that I was far too cowardly to test that theory.

  They told us he made it through surgery some time before dawn. And that we could see him, one at a time and for very brief periods. I was up and on my feet without thinking about it, and only noticed that Carolyn stood too as I passed her on my way out of the waiting room. I saw her hands ball into fists, but she stayed quiet.

  I’m still his wife! I thought furiously. You haven’t won yet!

  But then I hated myself that I could be so petty, even here. Even now.

  I followed the nurse into his small, curtained space, and had to remind myself to breathe. No matter that I’d cautioned myself to expect the worst – and no matter that the doctor and nurse had made a point of mentioning that he was a little bit worse for wear. I still wasn’t prepared.

  The last time I’d seen Tim he’d been Tim. That big grin and bright eyes that made you believe that whatever he saw in front of him, he loved. But tonight Tim lay on the bed, covered in bandages and connected to machines, looking pale and fragile and not anything like himself in the middle of it. It took me long, frightening, wholly disorienting moments to find the things in him I recognized beneath the tubes and the lines, the machines and the bandages. This was the beaten-up, gaunt and sick version of a man I always thought of as smiling and sparkly. I had a hard time reconciling the two.

  My breath came then, ragged and almost painful.

  ‘You can talk to him,’ the nurse encouraged me in her relentlessly cheerful voice. ‘Some people think that patients in his condition can hear everything that’s going on around them.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’ I asked, and my voice sounded wrong, too deep and too distant. I had to squint a little bit to focus on the nurse, who smiled impersonally though her expression was warm.

  ‘The human body is a pretty amazing machine,’ she said, with kindness. ‘I believe almost anything is possible.’

  That wasn’t really an answer, but I took it.

  I moved closer and settled myself gingerly into the chair next to his bed. I smiled as best as I could at the nurse, and then waited for her to leave before I turned my attention back to Tim. Should I take his hand? Should I leave him alone, untouched? Did he find my touch repulsive now or was it just that he preferred Carolyn’s? There were so many details we hadn’t gotten to yet in our brand-new talk of divorce. And there were so many times I hadn’t been paying attention anyway – I’d been waiting him out. How was I supposed to know what to do in a situation like this?

  I felt my breath catch in my throat, and realized with a mixture of shock and horror that I was that close to dissolving into sobs. The kind I’d steadfastly refused to allow myself since That Day, because giving in to the urge would be too much like surrendering, and I, by God, was not about to surrender. The kind I suspected might tear me limb from limb if I succumbed to them. I pinched the bridge of my nose, hard, and forced myself to breathe through it. In. Out. Until the worst of it passed.

  I wanted a real adult to walk in here and tell me what to do. Not one of my parents, who were compromised and complicit simply by being a part of my dysfunctional family – and inexorably tied up in my feelings about my sister. A real adult, the kind who would exude competence and grace and know exactly what needed to happen. Even in a situation like this. It baffled me that I was supposed to be that adult right now. That I was supposed to be able to handle this, or at least survive it. Dignity and grace under these circumstances seemed like asking for far too much. Like for the sun and the moon maybe, when I was beginning to think I was lucky to be upright at all.

  I straightened in my chair, and leaned forward onto the bed. The hospital mattress creaked like plastic beneath my elbows, and I rested one hand on Tim’s arm, well away from the vicious-looking IV drip that was taped to the back of his left hand. I studied him, taking him in from much closer than I’d been to him in weeks. He looked different, as if my memory were starting to blur him a little bit around the edges now that I no longer saw him daily. He looked like someone else with his eyes closed, with the brutal architecture of medicine and potential healing all around him and in him, and with the bright pull of him dimmed, somehow, because of it. Here, he was just a man, just a body, no more than broken flesh and bone.

  He’s in what we call a medically induced coma, the doctor had said, looking as exhausted as I felt, to encourage his brain to stop swelling, and the rest of him to keep healing. In a few days, if it all looks good, we’ll take him off the drugs and wait for him to wake up.

  Looking at Tim now, I couldn’t see his swollen brain, or any of the other sickening, dangerous, life-threatening things the doctor had mentioned so matter-of-factly. I could only see the hands that had held mine so tightly once, so small now against the white sheets and blankets, freckles and faint golden hairs dusting the backs of them like remnants of the life I remembered far too vividly. The jaw he always kept clean-shaven, even if that meant he had to shave twice a day, was shadowed tonight, making him look even more unlike himself. But this was him, and I was here, and I couldn’t turn back time on any of the things that had happened in the last few months, not even this.

  I opened my mouth to speak to him, but stopped myself. What could I say? Even if he really could hear me, which I somehow doubted, what was the right thing to say under the circumstances? What did a soon-to-be divorced wife say to the husband who had so cruelly and callously betrayed her, when he was himself so terribly hurt?

  If I were a better person, I thought then, looking at Tim as I listened to the machines breathe for him, I would have allowed Carolyn to be his first visitor. However little I liked it, my sister was the one he wanted. How much more obvious did he have to make that?

  But I wasn’t a better person. That was perfectly clear to me, as I sat there hollow-eyed and with leftover adrenalin and fear churning around inside me. There was the part of me, I could admit, that saw this accident as an opportunity. Isn’t that what near-death experiences were supposed to do? If Tim woke up from this, wasn’t this exactly the sort of thing that should snap him out of his Carolyn Fever? I had resigned myself to waiting this out, because I knew it couldn’t last. But maybe this accident would expedite the process. When he woke up, maybe he’d realize it was high time he came home.

  He had to.

  Carolyn, I knew, was just a distraction, and I was happy to do whatever it took to figure out why this had happened in the first place. Counselling. Marriage retreats. Whatever he wanted.

  He just had to wake up so I could tell him so.

  I had loved him first, and for longer, and I loved him enough to hold on through this insane affair of his. Surely that counted for something. Surely that meant something.

  Maybe not to him, I thought, putting one hand next to the other on his arm and holding onto him as if there were some kind of skin-to-skin communication, as if my palms could beam healing warmth into his cool flesh, as if he could feel anything in the first place.

  As if he would wake up from all of this the man I’d thought he was when I’d married him.

  I bent my head over my hands instead, squeezed my eyes shut, and held on as hard as I dared.

  3

  When I walked back into the waiting room, I could see the faint tint of dark blue in the sky outside the windows, lightening the inky-black night. Dawn was well on its way, and there was no getting away from the fact that this was really happening. Tim was really, truly, lying in that hospital bed. I couldn’t imagine that away.

  I nodded as politely as possible at Carolyn, as if that would win me points. Her agitation was like a living thing, bright and hot, and it seemed to slap at me. I watched as she bolted from the room, and fought that same surge of bitterness all over again. I was alive with pettiness. It crawled over my skin like lice. I tamped it down and let her vanish down the hallway without comment.

  But the words I didn’t s
ay, vicious and mean, clogged the back of my throat and lay on my tongue like metal.

  ‘How does he look?’ Dad asked quietly.

  ‘Hurt,’ I said, past the heaviness in my throat and chest, and my own great disappointment with myself. ‘He looks hurt.’

  ‘Carolyn will feel much better once she sees him,’ Mom murmured, as if there had been some concern on that score.

  ‘For God’s sake, Roberta!’ Dad snapped, and I sensed more than saw the scowl he aimed at her, and her own tight little shrug in response.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I managed to say, though I itched. I itched. I didn’t look at my mother again.

  I couldn’t stand the strained silence, and I didn’t want to stay there, stretched between my parents and all the weight and pull of my relationship with both of them. And their relationship with Carolyn, which ate at me, so unfair did I find it that they could find anything to support in what she was doing.

  I didn’t want any of this. I wanted my bright, cheerful life back. I wanted the comfortable familiarity and occasional surprises of my work, my days spent jostling for supremacy with Annette, and the shared, peaceful, contented evenings of my marriage. Comfort, companionship, and, yes, sex too. Did Carolyn know about that? Or did she think that Tim’s and my sex life had stopped whenever it was theirs started, sometime in the last eight months since she’d come home jobless and apparently shameless?

  But I didn’t really want to know the answer to that question.

  I wanted simply to rewind these last months away, because I had been happy back then. Before. Or if not happy, precisely – because who was happy these days? – I’d known exactly where I belonged and what my role was, and there was more comfort in that than I’d realized when it was just the way things were, when I hadn’t ever really examined it.